


The Way of the World

by Ponderosa



Category: Smokin' Aces (2006)
Genre: Bounty Hunters, M/M, Partners to Lovers, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 04:25:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2799494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ponderosa/pseuds/Ponderosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“He used to be a cop,” is how Dupree used to introduce him, like it gave him bonafides. Like he hadn’t burnt out after two years riding in a black and white and been a dead man walking for the other five. That time of his life was a blur of long nights, longer weeks, and nothing but the ugliest sides of ugly fucking cities. Vegas isn’t much better than LA, but he prefers it. Vegas knows her tits are fake.</p><p>Now he’s the one doing the introductions. “He used to be a Fed,” he gets to say, and next to him Richard smiles in the way that makes people wonder what it is that made him leave the Bureau.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way of the World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ceares](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ceares/gifts).



> Additional warning: There is an off-screen suicide in this as part of a case they work.

_“Fate just up and fucks you for no good reason. It’s just the way of the world. The way it’s always going to be.” --Darwin Tremor, deceased._

 

There are two types of people in the world: sinners and saviors. Oh, folks can straddle the line, but most of them skew towards one or the other. At least, that’s what Hollis’s grandmother used to say. She was a tough bird, Gramma.

As the Bonneville’s engine growls down the 95--a long, flat stretch of nothing--Hollis wonders which kind of person he is now.

“I shot a man today,” he says into that rumbling, rambling silence. They’re the first words he’s spoken since Tahoe and they taste funny on his tongue, gritty like charcoal or dried blood. Part of him isn’t sure he’s really speaking or if he’s just dreaming the words in his head. “Shot him in the name of vengeance.”

His passenger doesn’t turn to look at him; the Fed’s gaze is fixed out the window at where scrub and billboards for manicured housing developments dot the desert. Hollis wants to reach straight over and pull a reaction out of him, hear something besides the rattle of the fan in the dash and the equally useless circle jerk of his thoughts. Probably he should take some more pills because the pain is creeping back in. It’s a reminder though that by some unholy miracle he’s still alive. This can’t be a dream if he’s hurting.

They end up stuck behind a big rig, the last in a chain of cars full of impatient assholes who think going the limit is the worst thing that can possibly happen to them today. It means he doesn’t have to slow down much though as they pass through a speed-trap town that’s still mostly built of brick. The storefronts are lined with wooden walkways and rough-hewn railings like they’re waiting for the day that people give up cars and horses are back in vogue. A couple folks stare as they roll through. Hollis stares right back.

In a blink, the town’s behind them, diminishing in the rearview. In another blink, the heatwaves rising from the black strip of road erase the place entirely.

The shadows push long across the desert by the time the tank’s hitting E. In the dull flicker of incandescent lights taking over for the sun, Hollis flips through a stack of credit cards he’d found in the glove box. The first two cards are a bust, but the third one works fine, and Hollis gives a thumbs-up to the attendant inside the mini-mart who looks too bored to be concerned by credit card fraud.

“Hey, you want anything?” Hollis asks, ducking down to peer through the open window. 

“Richard.”

“What?”

“The name’s Richard.”

The smile Hollis answers with feels wrong on his face, false and flickering like the ugly blue tinge of the lights under the overhang. He lets the expression melt away, trickle out of him like the sweat that’s spreading damp across his back. “I’ll get you some water, Richard.”

Richard’s eyes are dark without the slanting sun to warm them. “Thanks,” he mumbles, his gaze going faraway again.

Hollis raps his knuckles against the hot roof of the car as he straightens. “You got it, buddy.”

Outside the sliding glass door where the promise of air conditioning that works properly awaits, he tugs off the sweatshirt Margie had given to him. He’s about to stuff it in the trash bin when he finds that he can’t. His good hand stays clenched tight around the ugly yellow thing, refuses to let go no matter how hard he wills it to. There’s a scream just waiting to break out of the tight trap of his throat, but with a quiet sigh, Hollis stuffs the wadded up sweatshirt under his arm and goes inside.

When he returns to the car, Richard’s behind the wheel. Hollis takes shotgun and passes the keys and water bottle over without a word.

*

In Vegas, when they hit the hospital roundabout Richard pushes his way out of the car without even changing out of gear. Hollis skids across the bench seat to hit the brakes and keep her from rolling up onto the curb. He takes the time to find a spot that’s near enough to not seem out of place, but far enough to avoid the pool of light from the lamppost.

He grips the keys and breathes a full deep breath. Vegas smells like home, none of that pine fresh bullshit that Pete kept going on and on about once they’d hit the mountains. Vegas is dust and gasoline and the sweaty smell of cash. The door creaks as he slams it shut and the heat from the drive wastes no time in draining out of him. He reaches in through the window for Margie’s yellow sweatshirt, dragging it back on out of necessity. It feels disgusting. Hollis endures it as he crosses the parking lot, his steps scuffling along in the shitty sandals.

Even going in through the ambulance entrance it’s quiet, but this is where the high roller crowd comes for some nip and tuck and the occasional bypass. At this time of night, all the action’s at UMC. The sandals make a different, equally awful sound on the slick linoleum. The clap and whisper of his footfalls sound like they belong to an old man with ratty slippers, each step moving towards the grave. Hollis stops for a while to stare at the very calming painting in neutral pastels that hangs above a row of easy-to-wipe-down chairs.

If he sits down in one of them he’s pretty sure he’ll never get back up again, so he turns the corner, following the signs, and ends up in triage in part because there’s no reason for him to track down Richard. It’s not his fight or his quest for answers, he’s got his answers. _Fate just up and fucks you for no good reason._ And besides, the pain is really kicking in now and a new scrip instead of expired pills sounds like a better idea than scrounging up something from a reasonably reputable dealer. Even if he still knows most of the guys on Narco, risking it sounds iffy when he’s thinking about keeping that car. It’s a dumbass idea, keeping a vehicle that's likely to be linked to dozens of open investigations, but he’s always wanted a project car. She'll be a whole new beast with a fresh set of plates, a new paintjob, and a fuckton of disinfectant. Maybe an exorcism, too.

The paper covering the exam table rustles as he shifts his weight, and Hollis notices that there’s another awful painting in here--faded swirls of yellows and peach and teal in a rattan frame. Someone on the planning board for the last remodel had a real hard-on for early 90s shabby chic.

The nurse taking his vitals looks about as tired as he feels. She’s probably coming up on the tail end of a string of twelve-hour shifts. He answers as well as he can without giving specifics. It’s old habits, not even the kind that’s meant to cover his ass, just the ugly fact that if you’re too free with the truth it comes back to bite you more often than not. Lies of omission, on the other hand, are easy.

Gramma would be disappointed in him, but then she hadn’t wanted him to go into law enforcement either.

Hollis makes the sign of the cross and wishes he were Catholic. He wishes he’d listened to his Gramma to start with, maybe tried college instead of following in his uncle’s footsteps. He’d told Pete that once, during one of those long nights sitting pretty in a u boat. _What the fuck you gonna do? Get a business degree and a nine to five like half of the jerkoffs we haul in?_ Pete had said. _Next thing I know you’re gonna be saying you want to take the detective’s exam._ Hollis closes his eyes.

About then a whole lot of shouting and ruckus starts up. It’s not a trauma rush on the other side of the curtain, it’s something bigger; the jingle of keys and a burst of radio chatter tells him that the security guard snoozing in the corner is being called to duty. Richard’s causing a fuss.

The nurse stays cool as a cucumber and pats him on the arm. Her hand is smooth and dry in the way that says too much hand washing and not enough lotion to make up for it. He notices that the lavender uniform top she wears matches her fingernails, and that the top has a repeating pattern with tiny dogs on it, the yappy kinds. “Don’t you worry, hon,” she says. “Doctor’s gonna have a look at that hand and get you on something to stave off infection, but whoever patched you up did a fair good job of it.”

“Her name was Margie. She runs a souvenir shop up in Tahoe. ” A bunch of truths pour out of him, slippery like lake fish. It’s the closest he can get to crying right now and he trails off, tongue drying up in his mouth. “Nice lady. Can’t say the same about the man of the house.”

He doesn’t see Richard get escorted out of the building, but he hears about it the next day at Mickey’s pub. It’s all idle chatter, a load of cop bar bluster with no specifics. There’s nothing about it on the news, so all he knows is that some nasty shit went down with the Feds and Sparazza and the Family’s going to have to import some talent or do some serious promoting with Israel out of the picture too.

Expecting to never see Richard again, Hollis toasts him and whatever the fuck he did in that hospital.

*

As it turns out, never is a matter of weeks.

 _Small world_ isn’t the first thing he thinks when Richard ends up in Mickey’s. The first thing that crosses Hollis’s mind is, _That guy needs a drink._

Against his better judgment, he buys him one.

Richard hesitates. Hollis looks different, but the superficial changes--clean hair, regular clothes, a month of crawling back towards feeling human again--doesn’t take Richard more than a moment to parse through. The hesitation is rightly rooted in becoming tangled up in shit he’s clearly trying to leave behind. 

“Fancy meeting you here,” Richard says, deciding to take the drink and the other seat at the corner of the bar. He looks Hollis in the eye, breaking away only to stare towards the drunken tourists slumming it by playing pool in the back. The short one is on a winning streak and she's loud enough about it that the whole block knows it. “I got a week-to-week at the place up the street. What’s your excuse?”

Hollis’s eyebrow creeps upward. “Hotel Paradiso?”

“You know it?”

Hollis knows it all right; all too well. “I worked Vice for almost five years. Say hello to Amber for me. Monique, too, if she’s still around.”

“I’m not in the habit of entertaining ladies of the night, but I’ll keep an eye out. I could use some new friends.”

There’s an awkward pause, the elephant in the room nosing in between them. Hollis nurses his beer for a minute, then asks, “So do you think they’ll bring you up on charges for that mess at the hospital?”

“More likely everything gets buried.”

They fall into silence after that, comfortable at least. Hollis doubts that either of them really give a shit about the game playing on the television, but it’s nice not to drink alone. He still misses Pete. His old partner was an asshole, but he’d been a familiar asshole, and he’d never gone on the take, not even when his wife left him and tore his life apart, and by extension, Hollis’s.

Mickey waves Hollis’s attention away from the scramble at the 20 yard line. His real name’s LaRon, but when he took over the place everyone took to calling him Mickey, or _Irish_ , on account of the sign. He holds the receiver of the bar’s old school, rotary-dial, piece of shit phone pressed to his chest. “Hey, Elmore,” he says in a voice deeper than God's, “you taking calls now?”

He hasn’t thought about it. There had been over a hundred grand stuffed into the cushions of that old Bonneville. He could keep not thinking about it if he wants, but money always went like water out here in the desert, disappearing faster than you’d expect.

“Mutt’s asking for Jack. Don’t know how he ain’t heard yet. But Jack's not gonna answer from on high now is he, so do you want the fucking call or not?”

Up there in Heaven’s it’s beautiful, Hollis has heard.

He holds the neck of his beer in his left hand. The sutures are out, and he’s down to rebandaging the stumps once a day. Condensation seeps into the gauze. He can feel Richard’s attention on him like a crackle of static in his ear. “Give me the fucking phone,” he says, and grabs the receiver from Mickey.

It’s an easy gig for the money: A rich kid that isn’t rich enough to know how to get past the border without a passport and his tag-along girlfriend who’s going to get sick of not calling her friends in a few days’ time.

Hollis hangs up the phone and pushes it to arms length where Mickey can fetch it when he’s done slinging another round at the tourists. He locks eyes with Richard, who never bothered to pretend he wasn’t listening in. “You want a job?”

“Not really.”

“Are you being literal or are you turning down two grand and a chance to say fuck you to the assholes who cut you loose. Only the Marshalls hate recovery more than you guys do.”

Richard raises his near-empty glass in agreement and says, “Technically, they didn’t cut me loose; I resigned.”

“Technically, I used to jerk off with my left hand, but I’m learning to live with the right. C’mon, I already know I can ride eight hours with you in a car that smells like the Hotel Paradiso.”

Despite himself, Richard cracks a smile. It’s a good look on him, Hollis thinks.

*

Hollis isn’t sure at first if Richard will be up to the gig. It takes a certain kind. It’s the chase though that’s gets him going--a puzzle to solve for a mind that badly needs some distraction--and it’s the chase that keeps him going. Lucky for Hollis, Richard’s better at planning and way better with people than Dupree ever was. Quieter too, at first, though these days he smiles a lot more and cracks jokes when they’re killing time by sucking down beers. Hollis doesn’t always think Richard’s funny, but he rarely puts his head on the bar next to the bowl of peanuts to think about swallowing a bullet instead of enduring another hour of the guy’s company.

Short of it is, they make a pretty good team.

Turns out having half a hand doesn’t slow Hollis down much in the field. Not that he’d ever been the one hauling assholes down by the pants while they scrabbled over fences; he’d always been more of a wait outside the most likely escape hatch with a two-by-four kind of guy. If anything, looking like he’d had three of his fingers bitten off just scares the shit out of jumpers. His scarred up digits are ugly, twisted things--hard knots of flesh that don’t stop somewhere clean and recognizable like a joint.

People shy away from shit like that. Kids are the only ones who actually stare. Kids and Richard, who sometimes gets this unfocused look on his face that can get creepy really quick. Today that blank expression is nowhere to be seen. Richard’s slipping his suit jacket off, nodding towards the house down the block as he takes the booth seat beside Hollis. “Think our guy’s in there?”

“It’s a fair bet,” Hollis answers. He stirs his coffee. There’s no cream in it and no sugar; he just likes watching the tiny bubbles from the top-off swirl around in a miniature black whirlpool. “You want me to take the other side of the table? Getting a little cozy in here don’t you think?”

“What, are you ashamed to sit with me? I’ve showered and everything, and I bet the waitress thinks we make a real cute couple.”

“I am, matter of fact, ashamed to sit with you. When are you going to dress like a normal human being that belongs in this decade? Suits are for funerals and courthouses.”

“Makes it feel like a real job.” Richard fixes his tie before he waves the waitress over. “Besides, if I wore jeans every day how would you ever stop looking at my fine ass,” he trails into a camp lisp right in time to order breakfast, and the woman does actually seem charmed when Richard drops a smacking kiss into Hollis’s hair and gives it a ruffle. “He’s always grumpy until his third cup.”

Hollis stirs his coffee again. Richard’s arm stretches along the booth behind him, relaxed in a way that Hollis is still getting used to. He’s frequently too tense and too quiet, but there’s a playfulness emerging that keeps Hollis on his toes. He studies Richard’s profile just long enough to keep it from being weird. The guy might have a license instead of a badge these days, but he’s still all Bureau, and his focus stays on the house, and on the old Trans-Am in the driveway.

“Taking this guy down is going to feel _good,_ ” Richard says, words carrying a saw-tooth edge.

Both of them are a little bit broken. Hollis isn’t sure he’s actually on the mend though. They’d saved all his limbs, but he’s been floating for a long time now. It’s a little too easy to play Pete’s old role, turn into a junkyard dog when they’re running someone down and shove his mangled hand against someone’s chest to shock them into staying still until he’s got the cuffs out.

The authoritative suit and the take-no-prisoners look Messner brings along is just the cherry on top. Sometimes a skiptrace sees them coming and gives up, doesn’t even try.

Hell, maybe word spreads about bounty hunters, same as it does about contract killers.

Hollis wonders what’s said about them if that’s true.

*

“He used to be a cop,” is how Dupree used to introduce him, like it gave him bonafides. Like he hadn’t burnt out after two years riding in a black and white and been a dead man walking for the other five. That time of his life was a blur of long nights, longer weeks, and nothing but the ugliest sides of ugly fucking cities. Vegas isn’t much better than LA, but he prefers it. Vegas knows her tits are fake.

Now he’s the one doing the introductions. “He used to be a Fed,” he gets to say, and next to him Richard smiles in the way that makes people wonder what it is that made him leave the Bureau.

*

They’ve been working together for long enough that Hollis would probably consider Richard to be a friend, but their relationship hasn’t exactly progressed to cook outs and pool parties. So when Richard shows up at his house, coming up the driveway with his helmet dangling in his grip, it’s startling, like seeing a cat walk on its hind legs.

“She’s looking good,” Richard says. He lays a hand to the roof of the Bonneville, touch skimming along the brand new paint job that sparkles in the sun like a pearl.

“She is, isn’t she.” Hollis looks up between buffing away the swirls of dry wax on the hood. “What are you doing here? Something come up?”

“Just in the neighborhood.” It’s a flat out lie, one suburb isn’t much different than another, same big box stores and strip malls, usually the only thing that sets them apart is how old the trees are. Richard lightly tosses his helmet from one hand to the other like a basketball. After a second he starts walking backwards, giving Hollis a tight, forced smile as he retreats back to his motorcycle. “You know, I’ll get out of your hair and let you get back to your Saturday morning.”

Fuck, _Saturday_. The Saturday that marked the day they’d met. One year on the dot. Hollis waves him back. “I just… I lost track of time, you know.”

Richard doesn’t seem convinced that the offer is genuine. He smoothes a hand over his short beard, scratching at his cheek a moment later, his whole body language riddled with hesitation. He shakes his head and turns around, making it all the way to the end of the drive before he spins on his heel and asks, “You sure you don’t mind the company?” with this kicked-dog look that punches the air right out of Hollis’s lungs.

“As long as I don’t have to go anywhere to pay my respects.” Hollis runs the rag through his hands. He’s never liked cemeteries, and watching another guy get all choked up staring at a useless marble slab just makes him feel queasy. He did his memorial drinking last week with Pete’s old lady, trading bullshit about the good ole days that had never really been all that good. She’s doing well though, and so are the kids, and that’s all Hollis can really ask from the man upstairs.

“Deal,” Richard says.

When Hollis tells him there’s beer in the fridge--through the door, up the steps, kitchen’s to the left--he doesn’t expect that two minutes later, Richard will come back with a pair of bottles and a second rag from the open bin in the garage dangling from his jeans’ front pocket. He drops his aviators back over his eyes before he steps across the sharp line of shade to sun. Perfect hair, perfect teeth...he belongs in a magazine ad selling watches.

“You look like an asshole,” Hollis tells him, taking the beer and tipping it back. The cool slide down his throat is the best thing he’s tasted in his entire fucking life.

“Is it the hair?” Richard says, a tentative grin taking over his face. He pushes fingers through it, makes it stick up higher.

“Yeah, and the glasses, and the shirt that’s about a size too small.”

“Guess I’m doing something right. Here, lemme help,” he says, and crouches down on his heels to start on the grille.

By all rights, the job should go twice as fast; Hollis was already half done to begin with. Instead, working side by side, it's like they slow one another down. It’s good. This is what Hollis imagines it must be like to be zen--his mind empty, his breath slow and even, the rhythm of his arm falling into the same pattern as Richard’s without any effort. The beer warms up before he finishes it, and he leaves the bottle to sweat a ring into the pavement at his feet.

When the grille is wiped clean and the hood is nearly done, Richard stands up, his back cracking as he stretches. The surreality of the last hour vanishes, popped liked a bubble, and Hollis notices for the first time the sweat clinging to Richard’s skin. It stains his rust red shirt at the low of his back and at the hollow of his throat, glistens along the smooth tan of his forearms, and maybe it’s a good thing the guy always wears a suit out on the job if this is what flashing a little skin does to Hollis. He tears his gaze away from Richard’s body and attacks the last of the wax like it’s a personal vendetta.

“We make a good team,” Richard says, and his hand lands warm and solid on Hollis’s shoulder.

“Seems like.”

“Missed a spot.”

Hollis flicks the rag at him with an annoyed huff, and then they’re scuffling, brawling in the drive like a couple of kids. It ends about as quickly as it began, with Richard in a headlock and a stumble into the patch of lawn that’s mostly dead. Hollis had long since decided that the HOA could fuck itself, and he laughs at that as much as the pure exhilaration of acting like dumbasses as he and Richard land heavily beside one another. Hollis lets the momentum carry him all the way onto his back, where the noonday sun wastes no time in scraping across his skin and blazing red through his eyelids, sunglasses be damned. 

As the laughter peters out, a different sound wells up out of Richard. Hollis wrenches himself back upright and puts a hand to Richard’s back. He expects it to last only a breath, tolerated only long enough to be acknowledged before things go no homo, but Richard pushes into the touch, leans into _him_ , and Hollis stares at their distorted reflection in the Bonneville’s brand new hubcaps.

“We do make a good team,” Hollis mumbles under his breath. He gives in and slides his arm around Richard’s shoulders to pull him tighter. “And the two of us are a fucking trainwreck, partner.”

After ten minutes sitting in the grass and courting a sunburn, Hollis gets to his feet. He holds out his left hand to help Richard up, a mute promise that no matter how fucked up they are they can still move forward, and nods towards the house. “Let’s finish off the rest of those beers, yeah? Maybe hop in the pool for a few to cool down.”

Richard’s fingers wrap around his wrist in a fireman grip. Hollis wishes he could see past the mirrored aviators, to gauge the look in Richard’s eyes, but the lines around Richard’s mouth easing is a good enough measure before he says, “I’d like that,” and leads the way into the shadows of the open garage.

*

A bunch of boring jobs in a row come their way; basic shit that’s all about squeezing ex-girlfriends who are all too happy to give up everything they know about the guys who left them broke and angry. It results in a lot of driving, most of it taking them into the neighboring states. The guys that don’t hop the state line into Arizona seem to gravitate westward, ending up more often than not in LA. Just once, he’d like a skiptrace to take them to San Diego instead, but that’s where you go for a vacation, not to get lost in the teeming masses.

They’re stuck in a snarl of traffic, the both of them hitting the mid-day slump that makes conversation too much of an effort to bother with. Not that they’ve been doing a lot of talking. For months now there’s been white noise in the silence between them, an uncomfortable hum that sets his teeth on edge. It stopped being an easy silence that day in Hollis’s driveway. Even now, Hollis can remember what it felt like to have Richard pulled tight against him. He shifts to sit a little straighter, skin peeling away from the seat sticky with sweat despite the rush of cold air from the dash.

“You look like you’ve got something on your mind,” Richard says. His suit jacket lays across the back seat, leaving him in his shirtsleeves. The cuffs are rolled up halfway to his elbows. The low angle of the sun cuts in through the window in glowing golden stripes that curve across his tanned skin.

Motherfucking magazine ad, Hollis thinks. He also thinks about hand jobs, and because somehow on this side of thirty he’s turned into a sentimental sort of fag, he thinks about asking Richard to move in with him.

“You seeing anyone?” Hollis asks, and immediately hates the dead, desperate sound of it.

Richard pulls a face, and stretches, pushing his shoulders into the seat and wrapping his fingers around the wheel. The Bonneville snarls as they creep a few feet towards the next off-ramp. “Don’t you think I’d tell you if I was?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

The look that Richard tosses him feels as burdensome as the silence had. “How about you?”

Hollis can’t find the right way to answer that. He pushes the hair out of his face and goes back to slumping in the seat and becoming one with the vinyl. He thinks about the guy he used to hook up with. Does three months without a text still count as seeing someone? Does pining like a lovesick teenager count? “Maybe, maybe not,” he says.

The sharp sound of Richard’s laugh hurts more than getting shot.

Somehow though, the tension lifts slightly, and the usual pointless chatter that makes it bearable to ride in a car for hours on end with a guy who’ll take a bullet for you starts to pepper between them. Richard talks about his little sister and how he hasn’t seen her in years. He doesn’t say why that is, but he never says a word about their parents. Hollis spills his guts about his last bad breakup. He doesn’t mention names, and when Richard asks if the girl was stacked, Hollis avoids answering. Lies of omission. You never want to know what’s really going on in the skull of the person you ride with, but the way Richard looks sideways at him when they make it to their destination and are strapping vests on half a block away from the jumper’s house says that Richard can read between the lines.

“You take the side, I’ve got the front,” Richard says, checking his gun before holstering it. He grabs the shotgun from the trunk while Hollis pulls on the windbreaker that identifies him as a recovery agent. There’s just enough of a breeze for it to billow and make a sound like dry, skittering leaves.

Hollis gauges the lot and the two, narrow strips of concrete that flank the lawn and disappear alongside the little bungalow. Cute house with a wooden fence, it’s not the usual sort of place they track people down in. “If he’s in there, and the fence is the same height around the property line, he’s going to run.”

“Baby, you love it when they run.” 

Hollis flips Richard the bird. He’s retrieving the other shotgun when three distinct pops of gunfire send him ducking instinctively. Both he and Richard go for their radios, a useless reflex when they’re only two-way and not a line to dispatch.

“I’ll call it in,” he’s saying, phone out while Richard does the stupid thing and approaches the house in a low crouch. Probably no one will believe they hadn’t engaged first, but this is a decent neighborhood without a lot of patrols. Shots fired will mean at least a four minute response.

Standing to the left of the door, Richard reaches across his body to hit the latch. Unlocked, the door swings inward and he enters leaving Hollis to scramble up the porch hot on his heels. Inside it’s quiet, their steps creaking on wooden floors that are scuffed bare. Richard points Hollis towards the kitchen as he turns a corner to clear the west side of the house.

There’s a body. Hollis checks the laundry room and comes back to count two shots into a photo on the wall and one to the temple. Richard gives an all clear and finds Hollis staring at the guy. “He looked better in his mugshot,” Hollis remarks. You never see a lot of suicides in Vice, plenty of folks who were on the verge of, sure, but never like this and never this fresh. He almost feels like a rookie again, back in the days when things could still shock him.

“C’mon,” Richard says, steering Hollis back to the front door. “Let’s wait outside.”

The porch is mercifully shaded and Hollis takes a seat, draping his arms on his thighs. Richard sits close enough that their knees bump.

“So you’re not seeing anyone,” Richard says, and lays both of their shotguns at a respectable distance in anticipation of a patrol car showing up.

“Nope.”

“Would you like to be?”

Hollis tips his head to the side and squints as if that’ll let him read Richard’s mind. No dice.

“I’ve been told I look like an asshole, but my mother always said that looks can be deceiving.”

Blinking, Hollis almost can’t take the intensity of Richard’s gaze: It’s all soulful brown eyes, a crease between his brows, and a faint hopeful smile that makes him look ten years younger. Hollis massages an ache out of his palm as he stares back, disbelieving. “Are you fucking asking me out in front a crime scene?”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

“Looks are not deceiving,” Hollis says, and elbows Richard hard. The vest takes the brunt of it and makes Richard’s startled grunt a lot less satisfying. Of all the fucked up ways to have his prayers answered….

“If you say no, the car ride home is going to be real awkward.”

A black and white comes wailing down the block. “I’ll think on it,” Hollis mutters, though he already knows bad timing isn’t going to make him choose to pass on this fucked up showcase showdown.

*

Licenses run, statements given, bullshit traded on the you-know-so-and-so level and it’s nearing sundown by the time they’re crawling out of the city even slower than they’d come in. Hollis never really minds traffic, but today it makes him edgy, and when they’ve finally got stars overhead on the long, straight stretch back towards Nevada, he wants to stick his head out the window and howl to the moon. He makes do with the window down and running his hand through the air rushing by--up and down like a kite, rhythmic and predictable.

They stop for a piss at a rest area on the California side of the state line. Hollis is quick about it, needing mostly to stretch his legs and roll the kinks out of his neck. He loops the buildings and stops to read the bullshit signs on the noticeboard as he finger combs tangles out of his hair. He needs a haircut, badly, the length of it grown long enough that pulling it all into a ponytail before cruising with the windows open would’ve been a good idea. Somewhere in the back of his head a voice that sounds like Pete’s says he looks like a fucking girl. He smirks and mouths a silent fuck you to the night sky.

From behind him he hears the _whirr-thunk whirr-thunk_ of the vending machine spitting out sodas. Richard comes up next to him and hands him a bottle of Fanta and a bag of Cheetos.

“Am I being put on an all-orange diet?”

Richard gives him a big smile before twisting off the cap to his own drink. He lifts it like a toast, a bag of cookies held in the same hand. “When you pay for the date, you can order whatever you want.”

“Do you take all your dates to rest stops?”

“Of course not,” Richard scoffs. He gestures towards the picnic tables, an exaggerated seriousness painted on his face. “You think I’d waste all this on just anyone? Fine dining, scenic view, smell of exhaust and dirty truckers…. Added together these things virtually guarantee that I’ll get laid. You can’t say the same about that tired old dinner and a show nonsense.”

“I might be the type that likes to be wooed.”

“You, Hollis Elmore, are defini--”

Hollis shuts him up with the kiss, not because he’s sick of the wordplay, but because he simply can’t wait any longer. His palm skids along Richard’s face, thumb bumping into the cartilage of his ear, fumbling in all the ways that his mouth is not. His lips brush Richard’s, soft yet sure, a nudging open-mouthed kiss that leaves him trembling for more than the fleeting taste of Richard’s tongue, but he pulls away before he can give in to the urge to slot their mouths together and turn the kiss deep and hungry.

“--definitely a giant fucking _tease,_ ” Richard finishes, still leaning forward off-balance. Poleaxed isn’t a bad look on him, Hollis decides.

Hollis scrapes his teeth over his lip and ducks his head when a truly embarrassing grin threatens to crack his face in two. “Come on. A few more hours and we’ll be home.” He holds out his hand, gesturing for the keys. “I’ll drive.”

Richard looks unconvinced and about to argue that risking a public indecency charge might be worth it, but he forks over the keys. Tearing open the little bag of cookies as they cross the lot, Richard pops one in his mouth and says around the crumbs, “What are your thoughts on road head?”

“Get in the car.”

Every motion he takes, Hollis can feel Richard’s scrutiny. He may be acting nonchalant as he shovels cookies in his face, but his attention stays keenly on Hollis: tracking the crane of Hollis’s neck as he pulls out of the spot; catching on the way he holds the wheel differently between his hands; and sliding along the spread of his thighs like Richard is just aching to make a move and actually suck him off right here and now.

Each mile crackles with a brewing storm of anticipation, the kind that Hollis thought he’d left behind twenty years ago in the back rows of movie theatres. He intentionally drives the limit, traffic whizzing past them in the left lanes, and he stretches an arm out across the back of the seat to toy with the collar of Richard’s shirt. “You going to be okay sporting that hard-on for another hour and a half?”

“Blue balls are a legitimate medical condition, you know. It’s called _epidydimal hypertension_.”

Hollis shakes his head. The random facts that Richard can spout are becoming legendary. His fingertips curl affectionately into the hair at Richard’s nape, and he can hear the shift in Richard’s breathing, the soft panting sound that’s a pretty good indicator of how he’s going to sound when he’s spread out in the middle of Hollis’s bed.

“Yet another useless piece of information that’s going to be taking up some valuable storage space in my brain.”

“Oh, my mistake. My bad. I had no idea there was _anything_ of value in that skull of yours.”

Hollis gives the back of Richard’s head a light smack. “Wooing, you’re doing it wrong.”

“I don’t know about that. Sarcasm and useless trivia seems to have been working for me this far.” 

“So it has,” Hollis admits.

Richard drains the last of his soda and tosses the empty bottle into the back seat. “Promise I’ll clean that up later,” he adds hastily as his body sinks into a sprawl. He grabs Hollis’s wrist, lifts his hand and drops it high on his thigh, the heat of his skin burning through the silken fabric of his suit pants. He presses his hand over Hollis’s, holds it there, inches away from where his dick is outlined clearly. “How’s my boyish charm and go-getter attitude doing?”

“I’ll let you know.” Hollis wants very much to slip his fingers further between Richard’s legs and let the edge of his hand brush Richard’s dick to see if Richard is as responsive as he seems. Instead, he gives a flirty squeeze and puts both hands on the wheel.

“Really?” Richard whines. “You’re going to make me wait? I can take care of this myself, you know.”

“Oh, but it’ll be worth it,” Hollis tells him, and hits the gas. With all the love he’s poured into this thing, the classic 421 under the hood roars beautifully, gets to a hundred twenty easily and gives the needle on the speedometer nowhere left to go.

Richard cranks down the window again, the chill of the desert night blowing in, and Hollis glances over to catch his eyes sliding shut as the wind rushes over his face. He doesn’t look disappointed, more like he’s enjoying the dance that they’ve been doing for what Hollis realizes has been quite some time now. Richard only looks disappointed when he flips on the radio and starts singing along, and no amount of urging will get Hollis to join him in belting out the chorus.

Heading into Nevada, a neon cross floats on the horizon, and Hollis thinks about sinners and saviors and goddamn second chances. But above all, he thinks about how fucking good it’s going to feel to press the whole of his body against Richard’s.

*

Hollis kills the engine as the garage door slides shut and the sudden absence of sound makes his brain compensate and fill his ears with aimless noise. He’s always liked this moment: the slow tick under the hood as the car cools, the floating sensation as it sinks in that he’s made it through a long day alive and breathing. Alone, he’d stay here a good five minutes more, maybe turn the radio back on and just let the music flow through him. Instead, he pushes the door open and says, “This is how tonight is going to work: You’re going to go upstairs and use the shower--not the one in the master’s ‘cause the overhead light is busted in there. Give it a few to warm up, the pipes are shitty. Meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy a beer, and then use whatever hot water you’ve left--

When Richard’s mouth drops open, Hollis adds, “Don’t interrupt. When I come out, you’re going to be in the middle of my bed wearing nothing but a smile.”

“How do you feel about sunglasses at night?”

“What did I say about interrupting? Jesus. Look, I’ve put a lot of thought into this.” Hollis gets out of the car, leaning his elbows on the roof as Richard pulls his stuff out of the back. “So you’re naked, and in my bed, and then it’s your call: If you roll over I am more than prepared to eat your fine ass out for oh, an hour at least, but if all you want is to get your dick wet, there’s a strip of condoms in the top drawer on the right hand side and you should know I like being on top.”

Hollis slaps a palm against the metal and aims a finger gun at Richard, leaving him with that poleaxed expression again. Inside, as Hollis is cracking open a cold one straight from the fridge, Richard stops on the other side of the bar counter and starts unbuttoning his shirt from the bottom up. “Hollis, you’re a bit of a jerk. You know that, right?” Richard says. “You could just join me in the shower.”

“It’s more fun this way.” Hollis waves a hand at the strip tease happening in front of him. “But tell me one thing: What the hell is up with that six pack? I’ve seen what you eat.”

Richard skirts the bar, snags the bottle out of Hollis’s hand and leans in to kiss him, a smear of lips that ends with a soft laugh. He whispers, “Unlike some guys, I take care of myself,” into Hollis’s mouth and takes the beer with him as he goes for the stairs.

Opening the fridge to get a new bottle, Hollis ends up staring unfocused at the jumbled shelves that are mostly condiments. Could it possibly say “a bachelor lives here” any more than it does? At least he’s got eggs, juice, and a half loaf of bread. Hollis slams the door shut and slumps against it, tiny vibrations echoing into his back as he stares at the ceiling and knows that he has it bad--he’s already thinking ahead to breakfast and there are way too many butterflies hatching in his stomach.

He considers taking Richard’s advice to head upstairs right now and strip down and join him in figuring out which of them gets to spend the most time directly under the shower head, but he finds himself wandering into the garage instead and staring at the bug-splattered grille of the Bonneville. In his head, he can’t help but think about the two shots to the wall, and then the third. Of black primer and the iron cross and emptying his clip into a guy who deserved it and how he hadn’t even felt a thing. He hadn’t even looked at the guy.

A near-overwhelming urge to lob his beer bottle straight into the windshield grips him. Jaw tight, and with the flutter in his guts turning into the same cramping pain that comes with being dumped into freezing water, Hollis rides out the compulsion. He finishes his beer about the same time that he hears the pipes thunk as the water shuts off upstairs. He very deliberately carries the bottle back to the kitchen, setting it with the other half-dozen waiting to get recycled, and goes upstairs to scrub the day--the whole fucking year--off his skin.

“I’m going to sell the car,” he says, when he’s pushing a knee onto the bed. He feels like a new man; his body warmed to the bones by hot water that lasted mercifully to the end.

Richard props his arms behind his head, stretching into one long invitation. “Yeah?” He sounds genuinely surprised.

“It’s time.” Hollis’s hair hangs in wet tangles, and Hollis skims a hand over Richard’s chest to wipe a scatter of drops away. He looks up, knuckles brushing across soft skin. “Will you take those fucking sunglasses off?”

“I know you weren’t raised in the barn. That’s ‘take those fucking sunglasses off, please.’”

“Please,” Hollis says, injecting as much sarcasm into one word as humanly possible, "take off those," he says while mouthing a kiss against the ripple of Richard’s ribs, "fucking, god-awful, _ridiculous_ sunglasses," he finishes somewhere near Richard's hip.

“Better, even if you wouldn’t know a little thing called fashion unless it punched you in the teeth.” Richard plucks them off his face, tossing them towards the lamp on the bedside table. He turns into all arms after that, and somehow after a whole lot of kissing, he ends up on top, his weight pressing Hollis down into the mattress. It’s nothing like what he’d wanted it to be, but it doesn’t matter one fucking bit when it’s Richard’s body against his.

With shaky fingers, he learns all the spots that make Richard gasp, and turnabout’s fair play because Richard’s mouth gets familiar with a whole lot of tender places along his body. Somehow after a bit more wrestling they end up chest to back, his arm around Richard and stroking him off while his forehead presses against the wide span of Richard’s shoulders. A hard shudder goes through Richard’s body, a gasp that says he’s trying to stave off the inevitable as he squirms out of Hollis’s arms. He pulls a pillow from the other half of the bed and shoves it under his hips. “You said something about an hour?” he says, his teeth closing on his lip as he pulls Hollis back on top of him.

Hollis hasn’t literally rolled around this much in bed since he was in his twenties, but they’re puzzle pieces, the two of them, orphaned and thrown into the same box and by some miracle they fit together. He shoves a shoulder under Richard’s leg, pushing it back to suck a row of marks into the thin, vulnerable skin of his inner thigh. He coaxes a moan out of Richard with slow licks that build into a steady tongue-fucking as Richard grasps for handfuls of his hair.

In a sudden burst of motion, Richard is humping the air, fucking into his own fist and Hollis lifts his head in time to watch him lose it all over himself.

He collapses a second later, arms flung out on either side and his knees falling wide. “I think I need another shower.”

“This time I’ll join you,” Hollis says, moving to sit on his heels. He takes in the sight of Richard spread out in front of him, tries to burn it into his memory.

When he continues to stare, Richard says, “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“Not true, although it’s funny how my memory was fine before _epidydimal hypertension_ took up all the room.”

“How about--” Richard twists to grab the strip of condoms and the bottle off the side table. He shoves the lot at Hollis and his smile is just about the most beautiful thing Hollis can ever remember seeing. “How about you fuck me. It’ll take care of that little problem, and we can work up a real sweat to make getting back into the shower worth it.”

“Is taking pictures still on the table? My phone’s right over there.”

“Only if I get to put the sunglasses back on.”

Hollis laughs, and leans down to kiss Richard, and thinks that honestly, if they never get out of bed again, that’s all right with him.

*

Two weeks later Hollis sells the car.

The next day they get a line on a new gig, something a little tougher than their usual, or so Richard had said. He shows up in front of Hollis’s place no more than an hour later--still bright and early by most people’s standards--in a shiny black sedan. The tinted window slides down and he leans halfway into the passenger seat. “Hey, sweetheart, need a lift?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? That car looks like a rental.”

“That means it won’t stand out anywhere. Which, if you’ll recall, was an issue once or twice.”

“It also looks like a government vehicle. Will you ever stop being a Fed?”

Richard tongues the toothpick in the corner of his mouth and moves it to the other side. “Will you ever stop being a gigantic pain in the ass? And it _is_ a rental, genius, so get in and stop pissing and moaning. We’ve got a job to do, and I can’t keep shotguns in my saddlebags.”

“Who’s holding the bond?” Hollis asks, throwing his bag in the back seat before sliding in. The car smells funny and he’d almost forgotten what it felt like to sit in a bucket seat.

“This one’s personal,” Richard says, suddenly quiet and intense. He pulls a file folder out of the glove box and drops it in Hollis’s lap. “Have you ever heard of El Estrago?”

“He the one that killed your old partner?” Hollis could ask if this is something he’s hell bent on, if vengeance is something Richard wants or even needs, but the lines around Richard’s mouth don’t say he’s aiming to put a man in the ground, they say that after everything Richard still holds stock in the notion of justice.

“You don’t have to come with me,” Richard tells him as he opens the file. “It was a freak thing, getting word on his whereabouts. If we move fast, he might still be there.”

The roll of the dice, the hand you’re dealt, in the end the house always wins, but--

He latches his seatbelt and the relief on Richard’s face is worth anything. “Drive,” he says, and studies the file.

But sometimes you’ve just got to trust your future to fate, fickle temptress that she is, and Hollis is done believing that the world is and always will be just waiting to fuck him over. Richard is proof positive of the opposite, and maybe it’s time to believe a little bit in himself.


End file.
